I've used Forte Agent for years, just because it was the standard years ago. But now I know there are some viable alternatives. I'm specifically interested in some good opinions about Newsbin, Newsleecher, and maybe Newsman. But please chime in about any other programs as well.

I use newsreader for reading posts and downloading binaries, so I don't fall into the one-or-the-other category. Forte's always been pretty good at both. The only thing that has consistently bothered me about Agent is how whenever I close the program, it goes through this process of compacting databases or some other thing with a progress bar. Anyway, in recent versions, it takes forever to close the program sometimes, like a minute or two. Other programs I've tried like Newsbin doesn't do that. Maybe it's a necessary function, I don't know.

I've tried Newsbin recently. It has a kind of ghetto interface, but I think I like it overall. Lots of customizability and feedback.

I've heard Newsleecher is good also. I took a short look at it, and it seems nice. It has a search feature that people make a big deal about, but I don't know if I'm that kind of user. I don't do usenet as if it's a peer-to-peer program, so maybe newsleecher is not for me.

I was thinking about switching from Agent to Newsbin. Any thoughts from experienced users of either?

i really liked NewsRover for reading posts. A new v12 just came out. I know it does binaries but i don't know how well. For text it's pretty fantastic; nice search feature, sorting features, multiple servers, etc.

My needs for newsreading are pretty simple, I'm rather casual and not much for binaries -- so Opera's built in works well enough for me and is in a convenient location.

Historically, my top two clients have been Xnews and dialog -- both of which are powerful and highly configurable. Dialogs openness to total keyboard accellerator mapping is essentially what pulled me away from Xnews. I also was fond of its scoring and filtering system -- even used it as my main e-mail client for a while. On the go, I find Pimmy to be a most convenient solution.

I am always looking at newsreaders. I've yet to find the perfect one. I used Microplanet Gravity for a few years, but it went under several years ago. I am also using Agent (see image) and generally find it to be pretty able. I am not and never have had your problem with it being slow. It sounds like you have too much information in your database. Maybe uninstalling and doing a fresh install would help.

Xnews will do anything you want with text. It has customizable keyboard shortcuts, and it will download text files to any folder, letting you have several aliases, any color, font, size, etc. If you have time to sift through headers, you will love Xnews. Its developer, Luu Tran, has a great sense of humor.

NewsLeecher has two great strengths: (1) Binaries. It easily handles millions of headers, and the UI is streamlined to sort through tons of photos or archives in the shortest amount of time, and (2) its SuperSearch feature, which is a $10/year subscription add-on within NewsLeecher itself.

The attraction of NewsLeecher's SuperSearch (has nothing to do with P2P) is that you can search across all newsgroups for any keyword or type of file, saving filters or searches if you come back to them often. This saves you from downloading headers and even bypasses NZB services if you like. SuperSearch is also handy for seeing if all the files are on your usenet server rather than trusting an NZB file against your server's shaky retention rate. Soon, everyone who uses it comes to rely on it and thinks it's well worth the measly $10/year. NewsLeecher also has a download scheduler, allowing you to dial down your bandwidth during peak times which plays nice with your ISP. If you haven't looked at NewsLeecher since version 3.0, take a second look. It's become significantly better over the past year, and this is coming from a NewsLeecher skeptic!

Thanks Z, I just tried out Newsleecher, and it is pretty cool. I don't think I can commit to it because it has no ability for reading posts (unless I'm missing something). But it seems great for binaries. I will try Xnews next (is it me, or does Xnews look exactly like Agent?!).

KenR, thanks for the info on Agent. You know what I realized? I hadn't purged for probably over a year! As soon as I did, my Agent was lighting fast.

I also want to try Newsbin Pro in more depth now. There seems to be something drawing me to it's klunky interface.

Xnews is pretty nice! It definitely does have good post reading capabilities. Can't say that I like the whole Windows 3.1 modular approach to the interface. Reminds me of Pegasus email (which I used for years until switching to The Bat this year, thanks to DC).

I like the slew of options in XNews, looks extremely customizable. And I like the statistical feedback you get from the program. The interface though is a little downer. Man, everything about this program reminds me of Pegasus email...it's free, it's really good for a free program, lots of options, quirky interface. Deja vu!

it works for my kind of offline reading - what it won't do is keep copies of all the messages you read, it tends to dynamically retrieve messages, then lose them when you close the program, unless you tell the system to specifically save/archive them. Now i tend to want to read only a few messages and keep even less, so it suits me. I dont want to keep a copy of every message i ever read, only a few for reference.

So it works that way:

1) get headers. disconnect2) select messages to retrieve. go get them.3) archive messages which you want to keep so they get stored permanently

But as they say, it is not a true off line capability, but it works for my needs.

The archive function moves the articles you have chosen to a different area -an archive folder- although it will remember where the post came from and keep the threading if you archive multiple messages from a thread. You can also still "reply" to them etc. You can organise them in multiple folders and for example set a folder per group, per server etc. etc.

I can't remember whether the topic in the newsgroup window itself is tagged so you know you archived it or not.

The whole program is nowhere near as slick as some of the commercial newsreaders. It is unashamedly the work of someone who probably grew up using XRN or similar tools and wants that same kind of news browsing experience.

I have uninstalled GNU Emacs this week - the last thing I did with it was browsing the Usenet.

I was briefly considering to try the Forté Agent, but the free/open source XanaNews is more than enough for me. Granted, I don't use binary newsgroups, so if you misuse the Usenet as a filesharing software, it might not fit everyone's needs...